BA Mindset Principle #9: Accept and Embrace Change

Business analysis is about enabling change

Business analysts help organizations define and implement changes.

Requirements define what needs to change to achieve a desired future state. If organizations did not need to change and transform, business analysts would have very little to do.

Why then do we, as business analysts, get flustered by change?

Why do we expect the business system to freeze in time and stay stable while we are doing requirements analysis?

And then when processes, business rules or requirements change after we’ve put all that effort into capturing them, why do we take it personally?

Much has been written on the topic of change management. Projects have to recognize and mitigate the risks, and one of the persistent risk categories across all types of projects is business and requirements changes.

To be successful as business analysts, we must learn to expect change and master strategies for handling it.

The role of a business analyst is to help business stakeholders:

• Assess the changes — their value, impacts and risks.